The beginning of the Chosen
by accelerator 231
Summary: The God-emperor, lord of all mankind, watches as the Imperium of mankind crumbles around him. Seeing that this was mankind's darkest hour, the Emperor has decided that mankind needs not only a hero. But heroes to turn the tide on all fronts and parts of the imperium. This is their story.


It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

They need a champion. A leader.

A hero. No, not a hero. Heroes.

He could see them, in the threads of destiny and the branching paths of fate. Moments during battles, plans, intrigues, events, at which the 2 possibilities of victory and defeat balanced on a knife's edge.

A single hero is not enough. It would never be enough. The Imperium is too large, too old, too rotten, and just too stagnant. A hero would never flourish, would be bogged down in politics, be trapped on a planet, or be subverted or manipulated by the thousands of factions.

A hero is not enough. But ten, a hundred, a thousand heroes, that appear at the shatterpoints of destiny and at critical moments at all conflicts?

That would suffice.

And so the Emperor, though he bleeds and dies a fraction more each and every day, has chosen to make one more sacrifice. Through arts unknown to mortal man and with a will equal to the mightiest of gods he has mutilated himself, carving away the tiniest fraction of his own immortal soul. Into this fragment he has imbued his memories, his philosophy, criteria for whom this shard of his soul shall bind to, and a measure of his own unmatchable power, and with it he shall lend this Imperium a helping hand in these dark times. It is not a decision made lightly, for the process of creating this shard has left him noticeably weakened and the consequences of failure (or worse, corruption of his power) would be catastrophic... but it is a decision that he makes regardless. This is humanity's darkest hour, and he will not see his people fall when he yet has the strength to save them, no matter the cost to himself.

And so this shard of the Master of Mankind's soul is cast into the warp, where it's very essence is destroyed the daemons and foul creatures around them.

It waits for a moment, if there was any form of linear time within that hellish dimension, and observed the thoughts, dreams, and emotions of the people of the Imperium. Finally, it finds a target.

A young boy, barely older than 16. He is living in a small farming village, when it was attacked by the dark elder. These dark elder have been raiding this system for several decades, never letting themselves be caught. If they were to continue, this world and the surrounding systems would weaken, hence enabling the Imperium's numerous enemies to take over it and establish a foothold. Using this foothold, the enemy would be able to launch invasion after invasion, before being chased off or destroyed.

The Imperium would survive, but it would be weakened once again.

This could not be allowed to stand.

The shard of the Emperor's light descended, if that could be said to happen in a reality where distance was a mere suggestion, towards the boy who was facing off against a dark elder wych with an old battered lasgun, and then-

Chapter 2

It was a bright and sunny day when the xenos attacked.

Richard York had heard many tales of these aliens, but he had never actually seen one occur. His grandfather and uncles had often talked about them, talking about how these pale aliens, who looked like men but with black clothing and pointed ears, riding upon black, fast moving floating vehicles with cruel spikes.

He also heard tales of their cruel weapons, and how they had taken his parents away, laughing cruelly as their parents screamed in pain from their wounds.

He had never known his parents, so he did not feel the rage that he believed he would have felt if he had. Nevertheless, there was some resentment within his mind towards the xenos, for robbing him of a family he would never know of….

Shaking his head, he turned back to his work. He needed to support his siblings, after all. With no parents, he had to do the hard work all by himself.

He held the scythe in his right hand, grasped the stalks in his left, and prepared to swing-

The screams in the air and a large explosion in the direction of the village made him look up.

To his horror, he saw a large trail of smoke rising up from the direction of his home.

 _My sister!_

The thoughts of his siblings sent a strike of fear through his heart as he began to ran towards his last few members of his family.

When he got to the village, every single building was on fire. Dead bodies littered the streets, consisting of both civilians and PDF forces alike.

Screaming the name of his siblings, he ran towards his house.

Choking on the smoke and half blind from the heat, Richard looked upon his house and saw that it had collapsed. There was only a xenos there. One that looked like a beautiful woman. She wore black, but there was barely any cloth covering her at all.

Screaming, he picked up a lasgun from the corpse of a fallen pdf soldier and pointed it at her.

The xenos smiled a cruel smile, and in a flash, had smacked the gun out of his hand.

"Any more tricks, mon-keigh? Or are you going to just die here like the dog you are." The condescending voice sounded like one of those nobles who had come to his village last month, always looking down on those living in the rural areas.

And now she swung her black coloured sword towards his face, smiling wildly as she did so.

Gritting his teeth, he reached for a weapon, any weapon –

"Lord Emperor, help-"

In a flash of golden fire, a glorious saber of yellow light appeared within his hand. The blade shone like the sun, and its light was pure.

It was holy.

Swinging the glowing blade, he parried the blade of the elder wych. A flick of his hand somehow, impossibly, sent the wicked blade flying from her hand. The dark elder wych had only a moment to widen her eyes in shock before the blade separated her head from her shoulders. The body stood upright for a moment, and then fell to the earth with a crash.

Richard York stood over the dead body of the xenos he had just slain, a giant halo of golden light that contained the symbol of a 2 headed eagle surrounding his form. The world seemed to still and stop, as if it was waiting for what was to happen next.

He took a deep breath-

The world started again.

And ran.

He ran faster than ever, grabbing the lasgun from the ground while sprinting away from his house. While running, he heard the screams and cries of people under attack, and more importantly, the wicked and cruel laughter of the xenos as they slaughtered helpless colonists.

"No!" He cried.

He turned round the corner, and found his prey. A small group of aliens, in armor, shooting towards a screaming crowd of people in a market square. The streets out of the market had been blocked by rubble, leaving the only way out blocked by the aliens. The people were trapped with nowhere to run. The aliens laughed cruelly as they sadistically tortured the entrapped civilians.

Richard dashed forward and transformed into a blur. He was in the center of the group before they realized it, the message from their senses not reaching their brains before they were cut down by a sword made of holy fire. The ones furthest from him attempted to run, but they were shot down by golden beams from his lasgun. After a few seconds, Richard stood alone, with several corpses of dark elder raiders beneath him on the stony ground while dust clouds and smoke rose from the surrounding buildings that had been bombed out by previous attacks.

He turned to shout at the now freed populace who were stunned after the marauding xenos were cut down. "They're dead! Get away from here! Every run to the-"

A voice inside his head screamed a warning at him, prompting Richard to swiftly turn to the side. A dark shape swept an inch past his head, nearly taking his head off. Richard tumbled away off the pile of corpses and proceeded to break his fall into a roll. At this, the crowd was no longer shocked and began to run, screaming in terror as they ran past him.

The dark shape resolved itself into several Raiders, which were swiftly turning around to circle back at him for another pass. Richard raised his lasgun and aimed towards them in the blue sky. No matter how fast he could squeeze the trigger, they were coming too fast for him to fire off more than one shot, and then what would he do?

"Damn it, too many targets-‼" Richard gritted his teeth in frustration as he thought of the people still fleeing from the dark elder, their forms being cut down by the aliens' cruel weapons or worse, carried off to what godforsaken fate.

A flash of insight within the powers he wielded.

Richard squeezed the trigger of the lasgun and muttered a prayer to the God-emperor beneath his breath. A golden bolt of light exploded out of it, unerringly traveling towards the flying xenos and their skimmers.

Then a miracle happened.

The golden laser split apart into multiple bolts, each of them striking a foul xenos in the center as well as their craft. The foul creatures exploded in a burst of golden/ _holy_ light, while the craft themselves were sent spiraling down towards the ground trailing smoke.

Richard York lowered his lasgun, letting out a sigh. That was close. Then-

He became a shadowy blur, as shards of poison rained down on his previous position. A Corsair-class Cruiser had arrived above him, raining down weaponry upon him. Richard York leapt into a blur, dodging the attacks coming from above by a hairsbreadth.

He dodged to the side as massive explosion erupted to his right. Flickering like a shadow, he appeared right outside the blast radius of the . Pointing the gun at the ship, he pulled the trigger once more, the golden beam erupting from the barrel. This time, it was different. The laser was no longer a small bolt, but instead was now a large cylinder of gold.

It struck the aircraft at the bottom, and the vessel exploded into a pile of smoke.

The dark elder raid was over. The Kabal of the screaming face was finished.

The golden glow faded. Suddenly feeling very tired, the lasgun slipped from his suddenly exhausted fingers. The strength which made him feel invincible disappeared, and he suddenly felt so, so sleepy.

Richard York collapsed onto the stone ground of the market square, right next to a small hill of dead aliens and a smoking crater. The pieces of the ship that he had destroyed with a lasgun were still falling around him, but he was unable to perceive this.

Soon, imperial authorities would arrive. They will not know what happened. All they knew was, that the area Richard had fallen, and where he had been Exalted, had became holy ground.


End file.
